Combined application of biochar and silicon nanoparticles enhance soil and wheat productivity under drought: Insights into physiological and antioxidant defense mechanisms

作者：Bilal Zulfiqar, Muhammad Aown Sammar Raza, Muhammad Akhtar, Nan Zhang, Muhammad Baqir Hussain, Junaid Ahmad, Mostafa A. Abdel-Maksoud, Hossam Ebaid, Rashid Iqbal, Muhammad Usman Aslam, Mohamed A. El-Tayeb, Shiming Su · 发表于：Current Plant Biology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1016/j.cpb.2024.100424 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：Silicon Effects in Agriculture、Aluminum toxicity and tolerance in plants and animals、Crop Yield and Soil Fertility

Agricultural drought periods are enhanced by the change in global climate that threatens food security. One of the main factors affecting soil and wheat productivity worldwide is drought stress. Especially, in semi-arid climates, studies are not found about adding organic amendments may be a viable way to reduce the adverse impacts of drought on crops while enhancing soil qualities and water use efficiency. In this study, we aimed to explore the effects of combined application of biochar (BC = 5 %) and silicon nanoparticles (SiNP = 900 mg/L) on soil and wheat drought resistance. Drought stress was applied at the three most critical growth stages of wheat, tillering (DTS), flowering (DFS), and grain filling (DGFS) stages, then evaluated the soil nutrients and wheat drought physiological resistance under applied treatments (BC, SiNP, BC+SiNP). Results showed that combined treatment of BC and SiNP greatly reduced the adverse effects of drought by enhancing plant height (9.36 %), spike length (25.63 %), number of fertile tillers (29.26 %), grains per spike (10.86 %), thousand-grain weight (18.25 %), and biological yield (16.34 %) with comparison to the control application. Additionally, physiological measures like water use efficiency (20.58 %), stomatal conductance (29.26 %), chlorophyll a (16.25 %), chlorophyll b (18.96 %), transpiration rate (21.65 %), photosynthetic rate (22.94 %), electrolyte leakage (-17.77 %), MDA (29.25 %), hydrogen peroxide (-19.88 %), superoxide dismuta...